After a flurry of speculation about the PM’s job security, the stakes were high. How did he do?

It was a dog of a week for Christopher Luxon, with the prime minister buffeted on one side by the winds of geopolitics and on the other by a local polling gust. A storm of conjecture was only slowed by the prime minister’s impromptu appearance on Newstalk ZB late on Friday afternoon, when he told Heather du Plessis-Allan there was not a scintilla of truth to suggestions he was thinking of chucking it in. 

He’d be forgiven for going to ground over the weekend. But out he went. There he was, at the Ellerslie Racecourse for Champions Day, addressing a group of punters while wearing a cap with “Well Written” on it, in reference to the triumphant horse. There he was with Judith Collins, opening a childcare centre in Papakura. Did he talk to her? We’ll soon find out. And there he was with MP Nancy Lu at a SuperBlues event for 60-plus National members, looking every bit ready to unsheath an umbrella, indoors or out.

But come Monday, the pressure was palpable again. There was a sense of something extra riding on Luxon’s media forays, beginning with the Monday morning broadcast round.  How did he do? Our subjective star-ratings follow. 

TVNZ Breakfast 

First on the list was the Breakfast studio, said to contain the most perfectly circular table in the southern hemisphere. No mucking around from Ali Pugh, who got straight into it after the 7am news. The week had been “disastrous”, was he thinking of quitting?

Not at all. He hadn’t been talking to his caucus about his job, he’d been talking to New Zealanders about New Zealanders. Also Judith Collins; he’d been “speaking to Judith a lot”.

The recovery was happening. It was just a question of people “feeling the benefits of the recovery in their own personal circumstances”. 

“What I really want over the course of this year is for more New Zealanders to actually feel’,” he said, clawing at his lapel as if he might plunge his hand into his chest and pull out the most patriotic pulsing heart this great little country has ever seen, “that there’s been a change and that the recovery is happening for them.”

“I don’t comment on polls,” said Luxon, before commenting, vis a vis the poll, “these are not the numbers that we want to see on an election day, and they won’t be happening on election day, I can tell you that.” Because “the only poll that matters is on November 7th”.

A solid job. Three stars. 

Mike Hosking Breakfast, Newstalk ZB

We all need a pep talk from time to time. And for Luxon it emerged as if from nature itself yesterday morning, urging that it is times like these that real leaders stand up. To resign would be “a mistake of epic proportions”. Only a fool would “take the poll seriously”. And – this is “the bit that would really focus my mind” – look around you, man. “It’s only Hipkins. I mean seriously. You’re only lining up Labour as an opponent. On the economy, the people who wrecked the place two and a bit years ago are asking the voter to come back and do a bit more of it.”

Listen! “The economy will save you. You campaigned on a turnaround. The turnaround is real, and given we’re voting on economics, the National leader is not a deal breaker.” Listen! “Having done the hard yards, why quit now? The prize is just down the road, and with a second term, perceptions change.”

The Coach Taylor above, is, of course, Mike Hosking, punching the air from the Mike’s Minute pulpit. 

Could Luxon meet the moment when he arrived in the ZB studio? The interview began at 7.37 – a good omen, surely, for all aeroplane enthusiasts. 

In keeping with tradition, we began with some Warriors chat. Up the bantz. 

“Mustn’t have been a lot of swearing at the TV this weekend, was there?” said Luxon.

“It was all good stuff,” said the Hosk.  

El Luxo: “They looked fit! They looked super fit!”

The Hosk: “Don’t you wish you were as popular as they are?”

El Luxo, without missing a beat: “Or as fit as them.”

As for considering his future, “absolutely not”, the prime minister scoffed. He had “no idea” where that chatter came from. 

Does the media “make this stuff up”, asked the most powerful man in the New Zealand media. 

“You’d have to ask them,” said Luxon. “As a politician, banging on about the media and criticising the media, that’s a fruitless exercise to nowhere.”

Reforms such as in resource management or education meant they were “taking on a public service at times, a media environment, you know, unions obviously, that won’t like what we’re doing, and I get that, and they push back on that quite strongly, as has happened at times”.

Fuel security? “We’re in really good shape, we have plenty of weeks’ cover.” He had been focused on that cover owing to experience from his “previous job”. (It is understood that this is a reference to his tenure as chief executive officer of the airline Air New Zealand.) 

An excellent collaborative effort. Three-and-a-half stars.

Morning Report, RNZ

For reasons unknown, the prime minister couldn’t make it up the road to the Radio New Zealand studio, but at 7.50am he dialled in for Ingrid Hipkiss’s questions, including 10 about whether he’d talked to his colleagues over the weekend about his leadership, which he answered with all the enthusiasm of a man reversing a trailer while booking an appointment at the dentist. 

He had spoken a good bit to Judith Collins, he said, on a number of issues. “The way that we work within our party is that we have conversations all the time … that is just how we roll with our internal culture.” And “the only poll that matters is November 7th”.

He said: “Much as you focus on the negative, there’s also some very positive things to say that our recovery is under way … I talk to New Zealanders every day, and we want to see more New Zealanders feeling the recovery this year.”

In that regard, he said, “it’s like a snowball”. It’s “about making sure we’ve got rolling thunder”. Very much spoken like a man who knows how to use an umbrella. 

As for the crisis emanating out of the Middle East, “what I’d say is relative to any of the other 195 countries in the world that are dealing with the same impact of this conflict, we are incredibly positioned and that’s thanks to some of the work we’ve done over the last year.”

Two-and-a-half stars.

Post-cabinet press conference

After the omnifumble of last Monday’s post-cabinet press conference, the last thing I was expecting Luxon to do when the clock struck 4pm was point right at it. More fool me. “Sorry, just so we [can] avoid the mistakes of Monday,” he said, as the questions began. “If we can just go one at a time, and politely with each other so we respect each other?”

Sensibly, the prime minister had brought out Nicola Willis with him. He had learned from the mistakes of last Monday, when he strode out there alone, and became more alone by the minute; by the end it felt as though he was under a single, flickering spotlight, marooned on a patch of sand in the middle of a vast, ink-black ocean. 

This, however, was a twin-podium event, with the finance minister providing both foil and filibuster. After Luxon’s opening statement addressing the impacts of the Iran bombardment, and announcing the establishment of a ministerial oversight group on economic security with a focus on fuel and supply chains, Willis spoke at length and in a very serious, unremitting metronome; cognisant, perhaps, that much of the country was already flagging after an early start for the cricket.

If the press conference had been a T20 contest, Willis would have won it, in terms of accumulated words. The first seven questions went to her. Luxon watched on with a mixture of what I can only imagine was (a) relief and (b) a growing anxiety that at some point in the afternoon, while he’d been out of the room, she had been made prime minister. To reassure the room that he is indeed in charge, Luxon mentioned that there were 195 countries in the world, which is the kind of thing only a prime minister would know. Later on, when Willis was asked about whether the fuel shock might put a fresh Air New Zealand bailout back on the cards, Luxon chipped in with a reminder that he’d “watched Air New Zealand prices for fuel over the last 10 to 15 years”. 

It was not until the 33rd of a 46-minute press conference that The Poll was raised. His grip on the role was “totally solid”. And: “I can reassure you I’ll be the leader going into the election in twen–” For a second it sounded as though he was going big, he was going to pledge he’d be the leader in 2029. But he corrected himself. “On November 7,” he said, with a grin.

Did he not talk to anyone about the poll, at all? “Oh look, I talk to my ministers and MPs all the time,” he said, grin intact. “In passing I talked about the poll result, but I talked about lots of other things.” He’d talked to Judith Collins, he offered by way of example, about Iran and defence, and “in passing I would have talked about the poll, I’m sure, but it hasn’t been a major focus”. Last week, he added, “wasn’t the perfect week, so it’s not surprising that I’d raise that or talk [about] that in passing”. 

Asked why he’d popped up on ZB on Friday, he said that he’d suddenly “realised that the media had gone a bit bananas on it all, frankly, and I thought, right, I better shut this thing down”.

Whether by instinct or because John Key drilled it into him on their weekend catch-up, Luxon at this point slipped into affectionate condescension mode. “Our team is solid, we are good,” he said, with a loving smile, “but I know it’s a big deal for you guys this week”, before effortlessly pivoting to the very different concerns of “ordinary Kiwis”.

And then: “Look, my focus is on building a great team and actually getting things delivered … You know, I’m not a career politician. I’m not going to have the perfect soundbite, I can assure you. The one thing I can guarantee you going forward is there won’t be perfect soundbites in the future, either. I’m not a creature of this place who has been here 20 years. I think, actually, people who know how to get things done, and how to get the best out of a team, and get the right ministers on the right assignments, is really important. We’ve had prime ministers in the past that are fantastic communicators, but don’t deliver. And New Zealanders are over that. They just want me to get on with the job.”

It was, you might say, an excellent bit of communication. Maybe, even, a perfect soundbite. Four stars.